Enterprises often maintain a record of people and/or entities of interest. For example, a commercial retail establishment may typically use databases of customers, vendors, and/or employees. A nonprofit organization may utilize a database of donors and potential donors. Sales offices may maintain a list of potential customers. Many other scenarios are conceivable where a database of people and/or entities could be useful and desirable. In the present disclosure, such a database may be referred to as a “contact database.” Entries in a contact database may be referred to herein as a “contact” or a “contact record.”
Records in a contact database may include the name of the contact, address, telephone number, email address, and other useful information about the contact. Such information in a contact database may be selected based on the specific needs and uses that the enterprise anticipates for the contact database.
A current problem with some contact databases may be duplicate records. A large database can typically have multiple sources for its data. For example, a retail establishment may collect customer names from a variety of sources, including credit card information, rewards membership, customer website accounts, club membership, gift registries, layaway programs, and ancillary services offered, such as oil/lube auto shops. As a result, the data for a specific person or entity can be entered more than once into different contact records. Some contact databases may currently have the ability to identify two or more contact records that bear the same name, therefore indicating the same person or entity, and then carry out a record linkage and/or merge the two contacts into a single record.
However, comparing names of contacts may be problematic for many contacts for several reasons: First, a person's given, middle, and last names can be entered into a contact record in a variety of sequences, thus leading to inconsistent records. Second, when filling out forms, some people often provide nicknames, but may be inconsistent with nickname usage in other forms. Third, suffixes and prefixes, such as “Jr.” or “Dr.” may be used with inconsistent spelling or placement. Fourth, typographical errors in data entry may result in two contact records having different spellings of the same name.
Corresponding reference characters indicate corresponding components throughout the several views of the drawings. Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of various embodiments of the present disclosure. Also, common but well-understood elements that are useful or necessary in a commercially feasible embodiment are often not depicted in order to facilitate a less obstructed view of these various embodiments of the present disclosure.